''Girl in a Band: A Memoir'' is a 2015 autobiography written by former Sonic Youth bass guitarist, vocalist and songwriter

Kim Gordon Kim Althea Gordon (born April 28, 1953) is an American musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Born in Rochester, New York, she was raised in Los Angeles, Califor ...

Publication

The 288-page memoir was published on February 24, 2015 by

Dey Street Books HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...

, an imprint of

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News ...

. The title draws on lyrics from the song "Sacred Trickster" on Sonic Youth's last album, ''The Eternal'' (2009): "What's it like to be a girl in a band?/ I don't quite understand." The lyric also appears in a piece in Gordon's 2013 art show—a survey of her work since 1980—at New York's White Columns gallery.

Content

''Girl in a Band'' describes Gordon's life from her childhood—first in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...

, then Los Angeles—through the founding and trajectory of Sonic Youth, her marriage of nearly three decades to bandmate

Thurston Moore Thurston Joseph Moore (born July 25, 1958) is an American musician best known as a member of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label. Mo ...

, and the ultimate dissolution of both their marriage and the band.

Reception

The memoir received strongly favorable reviews. In ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', Questlove praised the book's "careful introspection, detail and real feeling," noting that even when the many celebrities in Gordon's life appear in the narrative, "it never feels forced or showy. She’s clear on how the people around served her as artistic inspirations, sparking her ideas and giving her the confidence to express herself." In ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...

'', Leonie Cooper noted, "Gossip about the breakdown of both her marriage and Sonic Youth will draw many to Gordon's book. But she overrides it wonderfully, handling both with resigned simplicity and finding catharsis through the art she cherishes and a performance with an all-female line-up at

Nirvana ( , , ; sa, निर्वाण} ''nirvāṇa'' ; Pali: ''nibbāna''; Prakrit: ''ṇivvāṇa''; literally, "blown out", as in an oil lampRichard Gombrich, ''Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benāres to Modern Colombo.' ...

's 2014 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So much more than a rock biog, ''Girl In A Band'' is a unique record of the past 50 years of alternative culture." ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

s positive review of the book concluded that "this memoir is a kind of setting ablaze of a life’s work that for Gordon is now inextricable from heartbreak", but observed that, in Gordon's treatment of the breakdown of her marriage, "What could simply be described as a story of two people who fell in love and then fell out of love with all of the usual emotional squalor is... depicted in terms of the midlife crisis, a narrative frame that reads as unnecessarily punitive to all concerned."

References

External links

''Girl in a Band''
at

{{Sonic Youth 2015 non-fiction books American autobiographies Books about women American memoirs Books about artists Books about writers Books about New York City Music autobiographies Dey Street books